Why don’t more women get promoted?

By Jordan Weissmann

November 19, 2012

This past week, Goldman Sachs announced its latest round of annual promotions, and in doing so, it offered all of us a reminder that Wall Street is still more or less an adult chapter of the He-Man Women Hater's Club. Just 14 percent of the bank's new partners, and 23 percent of its new managing directors, were female, according to Bloomberg. That's pretty paltry, and about in line with the last couple years.

The sobering stats prompted Business Insider's Henry Blodget to ask his readers just what the heck was going on. Though he later nixed this passage after deciding it made him sound like a "sexist neanderthal," here's how he initially framed the issue.

Choice of words aside, Henry's on target about at least one thing: Babies probably explain much of the gap, and not just at Goldman. As Anne Marie Slaughter will tell you, even highly educated women tend to do a disproportionate share of child rearing in this country, and research suggests that ends up putting a huge dent in their careers.